Help Jason Find a Safe Home and New Start

My name is Jason. I am about to turn 35 years old. I own nothing, yet I have worked myself to the point of giving up. I was raised in a 4-person family. My parents were crooks who had an illegal marijuana farm in the basement in the late 2000s. I’ve been everything from hog-tied with duct tape and thrown in the back of my parents' car and pretended to be left in the woods by my father, to being completely rejected by my mother while trying to come out the first time, and a lot more abusive things in between those stories. My sister actually turned out to be my half-sister, and I was gay. I was raised thinking lying gets you what you want, and I’m starting to think it does because honesty and kindness haven’t gotten me anywhere.

In January 2008, I was ripped from my bed at night by my own father and shipped off from the south suburbs of Chicago to live with my grandmother and a man I’d never met at 17 years old on top of a mountain in West Virginia. That lasted 4 hours until my grandma’s boyfriend decided to get drunk and kick me and my grandmother out for me not speaking to him after getting sent almost 1,000 miles away and stripped from high school graduation in a fit of extreme anxiety. I was a recently open gay person, and I didn’t know this man, and I was in the south. I was scared. I spent the next hour dragging my things down a mountain, knocking on people’s doors asking for help while my grandmother screamed at me that this was all my fault. I waited in a stranger's home for 4 hours for my sister to pick me up from North Carolina, where she had recently been discharged from the Army and was still living on post due to her first husband still actively serving.

Since then, I’ve had to move from house to house to house. I’ve worked at places like Panda Express, Toys R’ Us, and UPS in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina, and Louisiana, where I now reside. I have tried to build myself up, but no matter where I go, I am always charged around half of my year's work salary just for renting a room in a “friend’s” house or a stranger's house. I have cooked, cleaned, watched people’s children, and taken care of their pets. It always leads to burnout up-keeping my present-day life while advocating for my future. I have not made enough money to escape other people’s homes, and I have no family to help give me the time I need to make it happen. I went from special education to survival. Something that I learned is that a large portion of children in special education now are dealing with the same problems. I have held over 100 jobs and have lived in over 50 homes in the past 17 years. I have been fired from only two of those jobs. UPS was my dream job, but the house I lived in before I relocated back to Louisiana (I spent 2014-2016 in Baton Rouge) had holes in the ceiling, and active heroin and crack addicts, and I couldn’t stand up in my bedroom because it was the attic and I am tall. I used to urinate in bottles in that attic just to avoid going down the stairs. I would go to work, pay my rent, shower, and hide in the uninsulated attic.

I have metal in my face, wrist, and foot. A total of two plates and around fifteen to eighteen screws. I’m currently in physical therapy for what my physical therapist believes is a bulging or herniated disc between my L5 and S1. I am on 300mg of gabapentin 3 times a day and 800mg of ibuprofen 3 times a day. I also get steroid and pain relief shots in my backside every 3 months. I am currently living in Donaldsonville, LA. I am in a town with a population of around 6,000-7,000 people. There are no decent jobs in this town other than the industrial plant CF, that will get me out of this town, and I’m not qualified to work there. I have exhausted multiple small jobs in town that pay enough for a teenager to save up for a car, but not for a fully grown man to make a living on. I do not have transportation, and there is no public transit. A “friend” I live with had me get rid of my car on his property because I didn’t have the funds to repair it at the time. Ubers don’t even come here. I can’t get to a job outside of this town and I’m stuck on the west bank of the Mississippi River, with it not having pedestrian bridges.

Right now, I am currently in a nanny-type situation in a safe place with a friend. My friend’s husband is in the Army, I live with them and their granddaughter and their granddaughter’s parents. They have been fully supportive of me and are giving me time and even space if necessary. I watch the 8-year-old while they work, clean the house, and take care of their own happy little zoo. I am trying to raise money to relocate to New Orleans where there is more opportunity for someone like me. A single gay man who could use some public transit. I have two friends that already live down in the city, so I won’t be alone. Returning to Chicago is not a healthy option for me, and I would be homeless before doing so. Helping me reach this goal would be helping a special education child that nobody wanted, finally reaching independence in adulthood. I want to go back to school, possibly for biology studies after earning my GED. I have things I’d like to do before I die, and I am starting to feel a lot older than what I am. I’ve cleaned up all of my bad habits in the last 5 years. Everything I’ve done has been with integrity, honesty, intention, and morality. I have started to give up on humanity. I have dealt with suicidal ideation for years after not succeeding in getting somewhere, and trying to manage all of the traumatic life events I’ve experienced that included other people. I start therapy very soon, and I’m hoping it brings me some peace. Please help me so that I can get to a place I call home. My own home, my safe space.